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“She did this the first few times at Kota’s house, too, I think,” Silas said. He pressed a hand to my shoulder, massaging. “She was all stiff and sitting properly on the couch. You’re really cute when you’re pretending to be shy.”
“I’m not pretending.”
Silas and Victor laughed.
“Sweetheart, you’re not shy,” Silas said. “You’re ... I don’t know.” He glanced at Victor. “What’s the word I’m looking for? I know it in Greek.”
“Personally, I’d go with firecracker.” Victor smirked. “Give her a spark, and she’ll light up.”
I made a face. “You mean explode.”
“Don’t pull that face at me. I mean sparkle and shine and dazzle everyone.”
I rolled my eyes, and covered my face with my hands.
Silas poked a broad finger at my cheek. “Maybe it’s coy. Coy is the word I want. You pretend to be shy until you get to know someone. I don’t know why you’re being all shy now though. It’s still us.”
I shrugged. “Just being in a new place, I guess,” I said. My eyes darted around the room again, eyeballing the seven chairs at the table. The entertainment cabinet on the other side of the room was closed up. There were four leather armchairs surrounding it. “What are the other rooms?”
“One’s just an office. The other’s my bedroom.” Victor’s fire eyes started to spark. “Do you want to see it?”
Silas rubbed a palm across the back of his neck. “Is it a good idea to be showing her bedrooms?”
“Why not?” Victor asked. “I’ve seen hers. She’s been in Nathan’s and Kota’s. Besides, she probably wants to explore. Maybe poke at the piano or something.”
I sat up. “You mean there’s a piano in there?”
“Pretty sure. I do play on occasion. A couple of people think I’m okay at it.”
How did they get a piano up three flights of narrow stairways? I started to get up, wanting to go see the piano and his rooms and maybe get him to play something, but there was shuffling out in the hallway. I fell back into the couch, bumping up against Silas.
Victor drifted out of the way.
A girl poked her head from around the corner down the hall. She had a plain face, with brown hair tied behind her head in a bun. Her pants were black, and she wore a thin, light blue blouse and plain black shoes. She looked to be about our age. She spotted Victor first and her face brightened and then she caught my eyes.
Her eyes bugged out in a short flash. She recovered quickly, but it was enough to make me cower into Silas. She made me feel like an intruder. She tried to relax her face but her shoulders stayed hunched like she was on guard.
“Hi,” Victor called to her. “It’s just us.”
“Oh,” the girl said. She leaned over more before starting to walk down the hall. “Is that you, Silas?”
Silas nodded. I felt his fingers drifting across my shoulder, curling against my collarbone. “Yup. And this is Sang.”
She stopped just outside the doorway into the room, as if waiting to be invited. The girl studied me sitting next to Silas and then her shoulders dropped as if relaxing. “Oh.” She glanced at Victor. “Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine. You may want to inform the guards that Dr. Green should be arriving soon, followed by Mr. Blackbourne. They’ll have the other guys with them.”
She nodded her head. “Should I prepare some lunch?”
“No ... wait,” he turned to gaze at me. “Are you hungry?”
I shook my head, uncertain of who this girl was, but I gathered she must have been some sort of maid. Was that possible? She appeared really young. Shouldn’t she be in school? I was certain, however, that I didn’t want to eat anything prepared by her. I couldn’t pin down why I felt that way and I didn’t know her at all, but I did my best not to cringe under her gaze and recoil into Silas more.
“I wouldn’t mind a little something,” Silas said. He seemed oblivious, as did Victor. Maybe this was just the way she looked normally. Was I overreacting? Perhaps because this was a new place, and I really did feel like an intruder, like I didn’t belong.
The girl bowed her head neatly. “I’ll put something together.” She started to turn and stopped. “Oh, and by the way, your parents mentioned that they may be away this weekend, the night before your concert. They’ll be staying overnight at the penthouse. So you may not see them right before the concert. If you’ll be away, I’m supposed to lighten the security for the evening and let some of them have a night off.”
“We’ll see. I’ll try to let you know. Thanks,” Victor said and turned from her. She started down the hall again. He refocused on me. “Okay, Princess. Let me know if you need something. I’ll go get it if you do.”
The girl stopped shortly down the hallway, and her shoulders hunched again. She didn’t turn around, but I gathered she’d heard what Victor said. She didn’t like that? Did she feel he was doing her job?
She continued and disappeared down the hall. Shortly after, Dr. Green came up the stairs, with Luke and Gabriel behind him. It was only then that I started to relax. I suppose having the others around confirmed this was their spot, and that made it okay for me to be here.
“Where’s Mr. Blackbourne?” Silas asked. “Are the others on the way?”
“They’re not coming,” Dr. Green said. “It’s just us.”
“What do you mean?” Victor asked. “Someone’s threatening all of us. The procedure is—”
Dr. Green waved two fingers in the air at him to cut him off. “The procedure has to change this time,” he said. “We’ve got one nut job already leaving empty boxes and calling in bomb threats directed at Mr. Blackbourne. Now we’ve got another possible one targeting the rest of us.” He gazed over at Silas and I on the couch. “Let’s get all our information out.”
We all moved to the dining table. Silas sat to my left, Dr. Green to my right. There were six of us, which nearly filled the table, but at the same time, I felt the others missing. I worried about them, and wondered how Kota and North were. Mr. Blackbourne was keeping his promise. He was keeping himself away from me.
Victor dug out my phone, and found a notebook and pen. He dropped the notebook on the table. He tapped at my phone, turning on the voicemail. He skipped the other saved messages, finding the third and latest one I’d gotten. He hit the speaker button and placed my phone on the table.
The beeping on the phone started almost immediately. As it played, Victor started scratching out letters.
With my toes pressed to the floor, I knocked my ankles together. I wanted to curl up on the chair, but I couldn’t forget that we were in Victor’s house. I wondered at the cost of the chair I was sitting in. He probably wouldn’t want my footprints on it. As it was, I felt like I sh
ouldn’t sit back either. I folded my hands in my lap, sitting up straight, waiting.
Gabriel leaned forward on the table, hovering over Victor as he translated. Luke had taken out his own phone, putting it on the table, flipping it around. Silas sat back in his chair, legs stretched out underneath the table. Dr. Green leaned forward, trying to read Victor’s writing upside down.
When the beeping was done, Victor grunted and tossed the notebook around so everyone could read.
She is not your problem. Move along. You all do not want to get hurt.
My heart dropped and my voice was too lost to utter the confused moan that started in the back of my throat. I think part of me believed whatever Victor had heard, that maybe it wasn’t so bad. Maybe it wasn’t real to me because I didn’t know the message. Forced to face the truth of the mysterious beeping, I felt the creepiness that must have followed Victor all the way from the school.
Dr. Green repeated the lines under his breath. He blew out a sigh, sat back, and raked his fingers through his hair. “It’s cryptic enough, isn’t it?”
“Is he threatening us or her?” Luke asked.
Victor crossed his arms over his chest, and shrugged. “I want to say he’s after her. He sent it to her cell phone. He expected her to share it with us. So maybe he meant to send us the message, and scare us enough to back off. That’s why he said ‘you all’. Like warning us not to get in the way if we don’t want to get hurt, too.”
Gabriel shook his head. “If he’s from here, he could mean her or us. Kids here say y’all all the time, meaning you or a group.”
“He had to know better,” Dr. Green said. “There’s a group of us and only one of her. But let’s stop trying to figure out why and what he means for now. She’s here with us, the rest of us are either here or in a location he won’t be able to figure out. Let’s focus on who it could be. We need a starting list.”
“It’s got to be one of the guys in our history class,” Victor said. “It started right after the teacher broadcasted her phone number.”
